2016年09月

2016年09月30日

Provided she is truly suffering nothing worse than her doctor has indicated, and that she recovers swiftly, her bad turn could end up doing her no serious harm. Though never widely adored, Mrs Clinton has tended to thrive in adversity—as in the humiliating aftermath of the Monica Lewinsky revelations, when her approval rating touched 66%, and towards the end of her gruelling defeat by Barack Obama in the 2008 Democratic primaries, when she was said to have relaxed and improved her performance on the stump.

Now beset by plunging polls and abysmal trust ratings, she urgently needs more of that positive press. Perhaps the notion of her battling on bravely despite feeling ghastly—as is sometimes said to be a woman’s wont—will help with that. But this may be a slender hope.

beset：悩まされるabysmal：ひどく悪いghastly：気分がすぐれない wont：しきたり・風習slender：かすかな望み

Mrs Clinton’s ill health has made her look weak. That is an impression that could prove especially damaging for a woman: sexism is plainly behind some of the titanic hatred of Mrs Clinton. Her campaign’s repeated, and patently untrue, denial that there was anything seriously wrong with her—even, for several hours, after her painful exit from the 9/11 service—has probably also reinforced its reputation for shiftiness.

Perhaps most seriously, for Mrs Clinton and the world, her affliction might seem to have vindicated Mr Trump and his fellow conspirators. The truth, of course, is that pneumonia is not dysphasia. Yet millions of Americans, livid with Mrs Clinton and the establishment politics she represents, might just consider that to be splitting hairs.

UNDER Rodrigo Duterte, president of the Philippines since late June, things have a habit of spiralling out of control. First came his campaign against drugs, which has led to the killing of almost 3,000 suspected dealers by police and unknown assailants, without even a nod at due process. In less than three months, he has presided over three-quarters as many extra-judicial killings as there were lynchings of black people in America between 1877 and 1950.

habit：傾向assailants：加害者nod at due proces：適正な手続きによる合意presided：取り仕切るextra-judicial：超法規的にlynchings：〈群衆が〉(法的手続きを経ずに)〈人〉を絞首刑にする

When Barack Obama expressed concern about the killings, Mr Duterte called him a “son of a whore”. America’s president tried to shrug off the insult. But Mr Duterte took the row to a new level this week, calling for American special forces to leave the southern island of Mindanao, where they have been training Filipino troops fighting several debilitating insurgencies. “For as long as we stay with America,” he said, brandishing a picture of an atrocity committed by American soldiers more than a century ago, “we will never have peace.”

On September 13th he told his defence secretary to buy weapons from Russia and China rather than America, hitherto the Philippines’ closest ally, and the source of hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid each year. He also said the navy would no longer patrol the South China Sea alongside American vessels. “I do not like the Americans,” said Mr Duterte. “It’s simply a matter of principle for me.”

hitherto：今まで

In other words, Mr Duterte is not just crass and brutal; he is alarmingly volatile. He has little experience of national politics, let alone international affairs, having been mayor of Davao, a city of 1.5m or so, since 1988 (apart from a brief stint as vice-mayor to his daughter and three years as a congressman). Since becoming president, he has threatened to withdraw from the United Nations and to declare martial law. He idolises Ferdinand Marcos, a former dictator who did impose martial law. He says he wants to give Marcos a hero’s burial in Manila. All this, naturally, frightens both local and foreign investors and threatens to undermine the Philippines’ newly acquired status as South-East Asia’s economic star.

2016年09月29日

ヒラリーが肺炎になった。(2)

Re-emerging to public view, 90 minutes after her enforced exit, Mrs Clinton did appear to be recovered. “I’m feeling great,” she told a small crowd of onlookers. “It’s a beautiful day in New York”. But the extent to which that was crisis management was made plain in a subsequent statement from her doctor—which revealed that the former secretary of state has pneumonia.

made plain：明らかになる

“Secretary Clinton has been experiencing a cough related to allergies. On Friday, during follow-up evaluation of her prolonged cough, she was diagnosed with pneumonia,” said Dr Lisa Bardack, after examining Mrs Clinton later on September 11th. “She was put on antibiotics and advised to rest and modify her schedule. While at this morning’s event, she became overheated and dehydrated. I have just examined her and she is now rehydrated and recovering nicely.”

dehydrated：脱水する

This was uncharacteristic candour from the disclosure-averse Mrs Clinton, indicating the potential calamitousness of her stumble. It comes at a perilous time for her campaign, with recent polls suggesting her once-ample lead over Mr Trump has shrivelled to around three percentage points—almost within the margin for error.

Making matters worse, conspiracy theories have long circulated among her enemies on the right about the supposedly poor state of her health, triggered by an episode in 2012 in which she fainted, suffered a concussion, and was subsequently found to have a blood clot. Mrs Clinton has since been given a clean bill of health by her doctors. Yet Mr Trump and his supporters have laboured to suggest she is weak and unwell.

supposedly：おそらくfainted：気をうしなうconcussion：脳震盪clot：血栓laboured：詳しく述べる

In a speech in April Mr Trump insinuated that, as secretary of state, Mrs Clinton had failed to protect the four Americans killed by Jihadists in Benghazi in 2012 because she lacked the physical vigour necessary to deal with a night-time emergency. “Instead of taking charge that night, Hillary Clinton decided to go home and sleep. Incredible,” he said.

insinuated：であるとほのめかすvigour：元気

Like so much of Trump utterance, this was nonsense. The attacks in Benghazi took place in daytime in America, and Mrs Clinton, multiple official investigations suggest, oversaw a creditable official American response to them. Yet the official verdict is not widely believed. Indeed, given that almost half of Republican voters claim to think that “as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton knew the US embassy in Benghazi was going to be attacked and did nothing to protect it,” her alleged ill health is the least of their poor view of her.

utterance：発言oversaw：監視するcreditable：見事な

Mrs Clinton’s habits of secrecy and, when challenged, obfuscation, have also played into her accusers’ hands. To explain her misleading claim to have been entirely vindicated by an FBI investigation into her singular email arrangements in the State Department, Mrs Clinton claimed to have momentarily “short-circuited”. Mr Trump naturally ran with that. “She took a short-circuit in the brain. She’s got problems,” he said. “Honestly, I don’t think she’s all there.”

obfuscation：ごまかしvindicated：潔白を証明するsingular：奇妙なshort-circuited：短絡した

The Republican nominee’s attack dogs have gone further. Rudy Giuliani, a former mayor of New York, who was once forced by ill health to cancel plans to run against Mrs Clinton for the Senate, and who appears to hate her, has accused her of looking “tired” and “sick”. Katrina Pierson, a Trump spokeswoman, claimed, on the basis of no evidence, that Mrs Clinton has dysphasia, a form of brain damage.

dysphasia：不全失語症

The reality is that Americans really should be a bit concerned about the health of their next president—whoever wins in November. Mrs Clinton would be the second oldest new president after Ronald Reagan, who is thought to have been showing signs of the dementia that would haunt his last years by the time he ended his presidency, aged almost 78. Mr Trump, who is two years older than Mrs Clinton, would be the oldest new president—and, despite his haranguing of Mrs Clinton, he, typically, has broadcast a much thinner medical record than she has.

dementia：認知症haunt：現れるharanguing：熱弁を振るうbroadcast：吹聴する

Mr Trump’s disclosure consists mainly of a statement, produced last December, by a gastroenterologist, Dr Harold Bornstein, which described his blood pressure and other indicators as “astonishingly excellent.” Dr Bornstein was pleased to conclude that: “If elected, Mr Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest person ever elected to the presidency.” This, Dr Bornstein has since admitted, was not a terribly serious appraisal. When it was put to him that it sounded very much as if it had been written by his patient, Mr Trump’s doctor suggested he had, “probably picked up his kind of language and then just interpreted it to my own.” No matter. Mr Trump’s health is not an election issue and Mrs Clinton’s, now more than ever, is.

2016年09月28日

ヒラリークリントンは彼女の党の全国大会の後で選挙遊説に出かける(3) ヒラリーが肺炎になった。

In the meantime, Trump’s campaign has done its best to take advantage of those weaknesses. After he restructured his campaign in August and seemed haltingly to heed the advice of his newly empowered advisers, Trump stepped up his attacks on Clinton’s transparency, her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state and the ties between the State Department and the Clinton Foundation. Trump has also been moving quickly to build a ground game in battleground states, an effort that stalled under Trump’s previous campaign leaders.

haltingly：たどたどしくheed：注意を払う

Already, the campaign has opened 30 new campaign offices in 21 states, with a heavy concentration in Ohio, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, as first reported by CNN. Trump has also added more variety to his schedule, giving more policy speeches filled with specific ideas instead of just broad promises, visiting a black church in Detroit and talking with small groups of supporters and potential supporters. In a Friday afternoon conference call with reporters, Republican National Committee officials and Trump’s deputy campaign manager touted their field efforts and promoted their National Day of Action, in which they will aim to knock on more than 350,000 doors across the country on Saturday.

touted ：しつこく売り込む

Sean Spicer, the RNC’s chief strategist, said the number of RNC staffers and volunteers in the key states is up dramatically from four years ago. “The footprint is exponentially larger,” Spicer said. The Clinton campaign has warned donors and supporters since the convention that the race would be tight and they cannot afford to get too comfortable.

staffers：行政の職員footprint：敷地面積

“As I’ve said many, many times: I’ve always thought this was going to be a close election,” Clinton said Thursday. But there is little question that Clinton’s organization is broader and deeper than Trump’s. In a sign of overall confidence, the campaign has actually expanded its outreach in three traditionally Republican states: Arizona, Utah and Georgia. Clinton’s top ground organizer, Marlon Marshall, touted what he called an unprecedented network of staff and volunteers in a memo to campaign supporters Friday. He claimed the campaign’s strategy “has enabled us to take full advantage of Donald Trump’s deep unpopularity” but warned that “this election will be harder to win than many people think.”

John Morgan, a Florida donor and supporter, said Clinton’s slim lead is not surprising, given the strong partisan divide nationally. “Politics is like sports. You have your team, and you are sticking with them all the way. If you are an FSU fan, there is nothing that your team could do to cause you to root against them, much less pull for Florida,” Morgan said, using the football rivalry of Florida State University and the University of Florida to make his point. “George Bush lost the total vote and really the electoral college yet entered with what he called a mandate. If she wins by five and over 300 electoral votes, by those standards her mandate should be monarchy-like powers.”

Democratic pollster Peter D. Hart took the opposite position, saying that Clinton cannot afford to just squeak past an opponent as bad as Trump. “Hillary Clinton needs to win, but she needs a victory which will allow her to say the American public has voted for an agenda that they want her to implement,” he said. Johnson reported from Washington. Abby Phillip and Philip Rucker in Washington contributed to this report.

IT WAS a small stumble by a sick and tired 68-year-old woman. Yet the dizzy spell Hillary Clinton suffered on September 11th, which caused her to retreat, tottering, from a memorial service in New York, looks like a giant gift to Donald Trump.

dizzy：めまいがするspell：発作tottering：よろめく

A video clip, circulated feverishly on Twitter, showed Mrs Clinton appearing to collapse momentarily into the arms of her bodyguards as she was forced to leave the service for the victims of the 9/11 attacks prematurely. She proceeded to the nearby home of her daughter, Chelsea, to recuperate.

feverishly：ひどく興奮したprematurely：早くrecuperate：回復する

“Secretary Clinton attended the September 11th commemoration ceremony for just an hour and thirty minutes this morning to pay her respect and greet some of the families of the fallen,” said a spokesman for the Democratic nominee. “During the ceremony, she felt overheated, so departed to go to her daughter’s apartment and is feeling much better.”

2016年09月27日

“It’s really quite amazing that after the Trump adventure this is still a competitive race,” said Scott Reed, chief strategist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a longtime Republican operative who managed Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign. Stuart Stevens, Mitt Romney’s former chief strategist, threw cold water on Trump’s enthusiasm in an interview Friday, saying he has yet to see Trump outperform Romney in any state or with any demographic in a way that would signal that he has a chance to win. Stevens said that any talk of Trump having a ground game is “fantasy” because Trump has yet to build a campaign structure anything like Clinton’s. Stevens called Trump’s optimism “childish.”

adventure：危険を冒して進むことyet to see：まだ見たことのない

“I don’t see the path. I just don’t see the path,” Stevens said. “I’ve been in these races where you’re nine points down, then you’re five down — you’re still losing.” Even among Democrats who wonder why Clinton isn’t doing better, the overall view is that she remains in position to win in November. “It’s going to be the craziest 60 days we’ve ever seen in politics,” said Mary Anne Marsh, a veteran Democratic consultant who is not working for the campaign but said she remains confident in Clinton’s chances. “Give me any other Republican, and I can tell you exactly how this is going to go down. I can’t do that with Donald Trump.”

She added: “I don’t think we’ve seen the most negative part of this campaign yet, and that’s saying a lot.” Marsh and other operatives said Clinton will benefit by more directly engaging media and the voters in the final stretch of the race — as Trump has been doing already. “I look at this race, and I’m thinking that’s not a dumb thing for them have to have done,” said Joe Trippi, a veteran Democratic consultant. Some changes in Clinton’s operation are already in evidence on the campaign trail. Among them: more interaction with the media; a series of policy speeches that Clinton’s communications director, Jennifer Palmieri, said are “more about her than about him”; and a shift back toward positive messages in television advertising and efforts to present positive elements of Clinton’s biography elsewhere.

biography：経歴・伝記

By the end of this week, the first in which she has traveled on the same plane as her press corps, Clinton had appeared four times before their cameras to answer questions. Clinton also played to the cameras and showed a flash of irreverent humor Friday when, after she had left the podium following a short press conference on national security issues, she paused and then returned to answer a shouted question about Trump. With dramatic timing and a sardonic smile, Clinton slowly shook her head and took a breath before addressing Trump’s perhaps ill-advised appearance on a television network backed by the Kremlin.

“Every day that goes by, this just becomes more of a reality-television show,” she said. “It’s not a serious presidential campaign. And it is beyond one’s imagination to have a candidate for president praising a Russian autocrat like Vladimir Putin and throwing his lot in with him,” Clinton said.

throw in one's lot： 運命を共にする、生死を共にする

Clinton also addressed head-on the perception that she is chilly or aloof, telling the online interview site Humans of New York on Thursday that her natural reserve is born of the “hard path” she walked as a professional woman.

“I had to learn as a young woman to control my emotions,” she wrote. “And that’s a hard path to walk. Because you need to protect yourself, you need to keep steady, but at the same time you don’t want to seem ‘walled off.’ And sometimes I think I come across more in the ‘walled off’ arena.” She continued: “And if I create that perception, then I take responsibility. I don’t view myself as cold or unemotional. And neither do my friends. And neither does my family. But if that sometimes is the perception I create, then I can’t blame people for thinking that.”

walled off：城壁で囲まれた

In addition, a television ad released Friday features a relaxed-looking Clinton speaking directly to the camera and making a bipartisan pitch that weaves in some biographical high points from her long career. It was the first positive ad released recently, after a string of harsh ones that mostly use Trump’s own past statements against him while barely mentioning her. “We’ve got to bring people together. That’s how you solve problems, and that’s what I’ll do as president,” she said in the ad.

bipartisan：超党派のpitch：売り込みweaves：織り込むbarely：ほとんど〜ない

Clinton holds several important advantages: She has experience and credentials, a vast campaign operation that drew the best political talent of her party, the hearty support of a popular sitting president and what seems to be plenty of money. She is marginally more popular than Trump. She also has significant disadvantages. It’s difficult for either party to win a third consecutive term, as evidenced by the fact that Republican George H.W. Bush is the only example in decades. A sizable number of voters think the country is on the wrong track.

sitting：現職の

And Clinton is a highly unpopular candidate in her own right. Democrats maintain in particular that Clinton faces unprecedented obstacles as both the first woman to be a major-party nominee and the object of sustained Republican attack for 25 years. “I don’t care what any poll tells me,” said Clinton’s running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, during an appearance Friday night in Norfolk. “We’re the underdog until they call us the winner.”

2016年09月26日

Pro-truthers stand and be counted To counter this, mainstream politicians need to find a language of rebuttal (being called “pro-truth” might be a start). Humility and the acknowledgment of past hubris would help. The truth has powerful forces on its side. Any politician who makes contradictory promises to different audiences will soon be exposed on Facebook or YouTube. If an official lies about attending a particular meeting or seeking a campaign donation, a trail of e-mails may catch him out.

Democracies have institutions to help, too. Independent legal systems have mechanisms to establish truth (indeed, Melania Trump has turned to the law to seek redress for lies about her past). So, in their way, do the independent bodies created to inform policy—especially those that draw on science.

institutions：組織redress：賠償draw on science：科学を利用する

If Mr Trump loses in November, post-truth will seem less menacing, though he has been too successful for it to go away. The deeper worry is for countries like Russia and Turkey, where autocrats use the techniques of post-truth to silence opponents. Cast adrift on an ocean of lies, the people there will have nothing to cling to. For them the novelty of post-truth may lead back to old-fashioned oppression.

NEW YORK — With Election Day less than two months away, Democrats are increasingly worried that Hillary Clinton has not built a formidable lead against Donald Trump despite his historic weaknesses as a national party candidate.

formidable：圧倒的な

Even the Democratic nominee’s advisers acknowledge that she must make changes, and quickly. Clinton leads Trump by three percentage points, having fallen from her high of nine points in August, according to the latest RealClearPolitics average. That tightening has frustrated many Clinton allies and operatives, who are astonished that she isn’t running away with this race, given Trump’s deep unpopularity and his continuing stream of controversial comments.

high of：高い値operatives：選挙参謀

“Generally, I’m concerned, frankly,” said former Democratic Senate leader Thomas A. Daschle (S.D.). “It still looks positive, and I think if you look at the swing states and where she is right now, she’s got a lead. But it’s certainly not in the bag. We have two months to go, and I think it’s going to be a competitive race all the way through. I would say she’s got at least a 60 percent chance of winning.”

in the bag：勝利が確実に手に入る

At the same time, Daschle said, “all the things that Trump has done, the numbers should be far more explicitly in her favor, but they’re not.” Among Democrats’ concerns is the fact that Clinton spent a great deal of time over the summer raising millions of dollars in private fundraisers while Trump was devoting much of his schedule to rallies, speeches and TV appearances — although many of those didn’t go as well as his campaign may have hoped.

Clinton has focused more heavily on fundraising than Democratic strategists had hoped would be necessary at this stage, partly to help Democrats running for Congress and state offices who would be useful to Clinton if she is president and partly to hold off further erosion in the polls. One new goal for Clinton now, aides said, is to spend more time trying to connect directly with voters by sharing a more personal side of herself — and by telling them where she wants to take the country. The campaign has long predicted a tightened race and has taken to using recent polls both to imbue supporters with a sense of urgency and to continue raising money.

erosion：徐々に失われることimbue：浸透させる

“Trump’s pulled neck-and-neck in a few recent public polls” and is ahead in the battleground Ohio in one survey, campaign manager Robby Mook wrote to supporters. “His fundraising numbers are spiking — he and the Republicans raised $90 million in August (his best month yet). His ground game is growing,” Mook wrote. “That means we can’t underestimate our opponent — because if we don’t see a serious uptick in our fundraising right now, Donald Trump’s presidency could be a real possibility.” Trump’s campaign, meanwhile, battling historic unpopularity and a flood of public Republican defections, has been delighted and somewhat relieved to see the polls tighten. Aides attributed the change to Trump’s packed August schedule, including a visit to Mexico, as well as increased discipline — at least by Trump standards.

The day after an interview with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump appeared on Russian-state television, Democratic rival Hillary Clinton accused him of making "reckless and dangerous statements." (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post) Just as Trump was repeatedly underestimated during the Republican primaries, his aides say he is again being underestimated heading into the general election. There’s a sense in the campaign that things are finally coming together and that Trump can propel himself ahead of Clinton over the next two months. That optimism is less prevalent outside the campaign, though many operatives are loath to predict an outcome in such a volatile election.

2016年09月25日

真実を失った政治 嘘をつく術 政治家はいつも嘘をついて来た。彼らが完全に真実を置き去りにしてしまうと何か問題があるのか？(2)

Lord of the liesThat politicians sometimes peddle lies is not news: think of Ronald Reagan’s fib that his administration had not traded weapons with Iran in order to secure the release of hostages and to fund the efforts of rebels in Nicaragua. Dictators and democrats seeking to deflect blame for their own incompetence have always manipulated the truth; sore losers have always accused the other lot of lying.

But post-truth politics is more than just an invention of whingeing elites who have been outflanked. The term picks out the heart of what is new: that truth is not falsified, or contested, but of secondary importance. Once, the purpose of political lying was to create a false view of the world. The lies of men like Mr Trump do not work like that. They are not intended to convince the elites, whom their target voters neither trust nor like, but to reinforce prejudices.

Feelings, not facts, are what matter in this sort of campaigning. Their opponents’ disbelief validates the us-versus-them mindset that outsider candidates thrive on. And if your opponents focus on trying to show your facts are wrong, they have to fight on the ground you have chosen. The more Remain campaigners attacked the Leave campaign’s exaggerated claim that EU membership cost Britain £350m ($468m) a week, the longer they kept the magnitude of those costs in the spotlight.

disbelief：疑念thrive：うまくやるmagnitude：重大性

Post-truth politics has many parents. Some are noble. The questioning of institutions and received wisdom is a democratic virtue. A sceptical lack of deference towards leaders is the first step to reform. The collapse of communism was hastened because brave people were prepared to challenge the official propaganda.

parents：根源deference：服従・敬意

But corrosive forces are also at play. One is anger. Many voters feel let down and left behind, while the elites who are in charge have thrived. They are scornful of the self-serving technocrats who said that the euro would improve their lives and that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Popular trust in expert opinion and established institutions has tumbled across Western democracies.

Post-truth has also been abetted by the evolution of the media (see Briefing). The fragmentation of news sources has created an atomised world in which lies, rumour and gossip spread with alarming speed. Lies that are widely shared online within a network, whose members trust each other more than they trust any mainstream-media source, can quickly take on the appearance of truth. Presented with evidence that contradicts a belief that is dearly held, people have a tendency to ditch the facts first. Well-intentioned journalistic practices bear blame too. The pursuit of “fairness” in reporting often creates phoney balance at the expense of truth. NASA scientist says Mars is probably uninhabited; Professor Snooks says it is teeming with aliens. It’s really a matter of opinion.

When politics is like pro-wrestling, society pays the cost. Mr Trump’s insistence that Mr Obama founded IS precludes a serious debate over how to deal with violent extremists. Policy is complicated, yet post-truth politics damns complexity as the sleight of hand experts use to bamboozle everyone else. Hence Hillary Clinton’s proposals on paid parental leave go unexamined (see article) and the case for trade liberalisation is drowned out by “common sense” demands for protection.

It is tempting to think that, when policies sold on dodgy prospectuses start to fail, lied-to supporters might see the error of their ways. The worst part of post-truth politics, though, is that this self-correction cannot be relied on. When lies make the political system dysfunctional, its poor results can feed the alienation and lack of trust in institutions that make the post-truth play possible in the first place.